Woman pays $300 to buy lobster in supermarket and put it back in the sea
The red lobster was taken home - but not cooked for dinner
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Louise Thomas
Editor
As most lobsters in supermarkets will discover, the final clacks of their claws will happen as they are cooked in some kind of seafood stew.
But thanks to the dedication of one woman, thousands of miles and hundreds of dollars, one lobster made a round trip journey from the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean to the supermarket and back again.
Christine Loughead spotted Lobby sitting in a lonely tank in a supermarket in northern Ontario, waiting to become someone’s dinner.
“It weighed on my psyche more and more,“ Ms Loughead, who is vegan, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
“There's this live being who — it's not too late to help. He's alive.”
Ms Loughead bought it for $20.23 and put it in a salt-water tank in her house. After some online research, she discovered it must have been plucked from the coast of Nova Scotia.
She appealed to fellow vegans in Halifax on Facebook, asking if anyone could put the lobster back in the water if she sent it their way.
Her call was answered by Beth Kent, who stopped eating meat more than three decades ago after opening an animal shelter.
Ms Loughead drove six hours to a delivery point, where the lobster was packed up in a styrofoam box with cold packs and wet newspaper. She then paid $225 and sent her clawed companion to Halifax.
Ms Kent spent some time scouting for the right locations.
After deciding against a section of water with a fishing boat on the horizon, she found a small cove and watched as the lobster instantly straightened out and crawled away over the rocks.
“It's a food animal to [most] and it's not an attractive animal, but I tell people to close their eyes and picture something cuter waiting to die in the deli section,” said Ms Loughead.
“I'm pretty sure you'd have an impulse to do something.”
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